


Becoming "Human"

by n4rut0runn3r



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Other Additional Tags to Be Added, zadf eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-13 08:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21491536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n4rut0runn3r/pseuds/n4rut0runn3r
Summary: Zim has been on Earth for four years and knows that the Tallest never cared about him. Now he is conflicted about what to do next. Conquer Earth himself, or become one of the disgusting creatures that live there?
Relationships: Dib/ Zim (invader zim)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	1. pilot

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I will try to update as quickly as possible, but this is my first Invader Zim fic and I'm still working on characterization! Thanks for your patience

Dib opened the kitchen window, and no alarm sounded. That meant that the computer was busy and  Zim was in his underground base. Dib slipped in and crouched on the counter, GIR was on the couch, but was completely focused on the TV. Dib slid off the counter and opened the “trash can”. He stepped inside and prepared for the decent into the alien base.

He stopped at every floor and checked for changes, looking to see if he could find out what  Zim’s newest plan was, but everything seemed unchanged. But he wouldn’t give up until he ruined  Zim’s newest attempt at world conquest.

* * *

“That wasn’t fair, you’re suc h a jerk!”

“Life isn’t fair Dib-stink, now give me the hard drive or the briefcase is next.”  Zim said, holding Dib’s alien hunting brief case over the tank of acid , t he same acid that had just eaten holes in Dib’s trench coat , in  Zim’s underground lab on the deepest floor . Dib  had snuck into  Zim’s base for the sixth time that month, the other five times Zim was watching TV upstairs and he was caught, but this time h e h ad stolen the experimental hard drive t hat Dib believed would  update the security system.

“No! This is alien technology that I will use to PROVE YOUR EXISTENCE TO THE WORLD!”

“While it is true that  Irken technology IS far superior to your filthy human technology, it will prove nothing, it will just look like a camera input module. So, hand it over. And get out.”

Five minutes later Dib left  Zim’s house sore, bruised, and with only half a coat and no alien hunting briefcase. To the untrained eye, Dib looked like a failure of a paranormal investigator, but he saw this fight as a win.  Zim won back the hard drive using his PAK legs, which meant that Dib got to take more notes on how  Zim worked. Dib had 3 notebooks about  Zim . One was everything about Irk and the Tallest. The second was about  Zim’s horrible personality. And the Third was about  Irken technology, including  Zim’s PAK. Dib hated  Zim . But he also looked forward to every fight. He prepared for it, anticipated it, and every time he lost, he was ready to fight back harder. 

Just because no one believed Dib about  Zim’s true nature, doesn't mean that he couldn’t singlehandedly ruin his life.

* * *

Dib Membrane has ruined his life. It may have taken four  Urth years to realize that his mission was banishment and the Tallest sent him here to die, but that didn’t mean he was incompetent. Just because his mission wasn’t for the Tallest, didn’t mean it wasn’t a mission. He was an Elite, he was an  Irken Invader, and he took his missions very seriously.  Urth was an unclaimed planet, ready for invasion. And  Zim was going to invade it. The world would be his, and once the tallest saw his worth they would welcome him back to the armada with open arms. But Dib has been screwing it all up. Every plan, every attempt at conquest has been ruined. He hated the only person in the known galaxy who treated him like he existed.  Zim hated that he couldn’t feel one certain way. It was like his heart and his PAK were completely contradictory. One says to love the Tallest and love the Empire, while the other says to love  Urth and to stay. 

Urth was beautiful. So full of life and color. Everything changes and nothing stays the same. Irk was always pink, always hot, and always a place of training and submission. You were never treated like you mattered. Because you didn’t. Your PAK mattered and how useful you were to the Tallest mattered. If you were under six feet you were nothing, and the only ones over six feet were the Tallest. Height doesn’t matter on  Urth , well kind of, but it’s usually preference. The only thing that made  Zim lesser than was his skin color, but he was the only person on  Urth with green skin, but he had also noticed that  Urth had a history with discrimination by skin color.

Some days  Zim wished he was human. He wished he could have grown up on a planet so primitive, but so full of optimism. A place where he could have a choice and not have his life decided for him. He wanted to experience childhood, and human feelings. But he can’t and he’s not. Since coming to  Urth he has started to experience some human feelings, but it causes a maddening to disconnect from his PAK’s feelings. 

Zim walked over to his tool bench and laid d own the hard drive. It was not a piece of the security system, but a PAK modifier, and highly illegal.  Zim wanted to disconnect from the Control Brains. As much as he had tried to conquer  Urth and win back his Tallest, he has failed in every way. He was defective and there was nothing that would change that. As much as  Zim wanted to make the world suffer for every ounce of pain that he had ever experienced, he also wished to be a part of it.  Zim wanted to make himself an independent creature. Disconnected from the Control Brains and separated from the Empire. This was phase one of becoming “human”.


	2. PAK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zim starts his plan, and Dib is confused

Dib was never one to be excited for Skool. Although he was top of his class and every subject was beyond easy, it was something he would dread. You think being rich would help you make friends, but it did just the opposite. Everyone hated him and he didn’t know why. He was told that he was “too much” by a classmate one time and what the hell is that supposed to mean. They were just blind. They couldn’t see an alien right in front of them let alone the potential that is Dib Membrane. Not to sound like Zim, but he was amazing. At 11 he was able to notice an alien, at 12 he saved the world, which Zim used a machine in space that used the sun's rays to wipe everyone's memory of the event. And for the next three years Dib has been stopping Zim’s every plan, and every scheme. Why no one saw his worth he will never know. 

Dib was still sore from his fight the day before, and his legs burned as he walked up the steps to get to his first period class, which was calculus. He walked in and took his seat right as the bell rang and noticed that his usual math teacher wasn’t there. 

“Hello, I am the substitute teacher for your class today, I am going to go around taking roll.” the teacher said. They looked like they had no idea what they were doing. 

Dib slouched in his chair and took his phone out, there was no point to pay attention today, the sub couldn’t offer him anything useful. 

“Dibromide Membrane?” 

“Here” 

A few minutes later as the sub was attempting to get the lesson going, Dib was scrolling through reddit as he heard the teacher call on Zim. That piqued his interest. Usually Zim was as disengaged as Dib was in class, as he was smarter than he was and didn’t need school at all. 

“Um, yes. I was wondering if you could explain that again, I don’t quite understand.” 

“Of course, Zim. Now where were we at” 

Dib stared at the alien. What the hell was that? Why was Zim asking a question to a problem he obviously has mastered, he even looked confused. What was he planning? There must be a reason that Zim is playing dumb, but why now? Dib was at a loss. There wasn’t anything he could think of that required Zim to act as dumb as a normal human, unless after all these years he was trying to make a good disguise. Whatever he was planning, Dib was going to find out. 

* * *

Once the PAK was successfully disconnected from the server it was very quiet. All the constant data and the voice repeating “for Irk” was gone. But that also meant that anything that Zim’s organic brain didn’t know was gone. Luckily Zim had been attending Human Skool for quite some time, so he had learned enough organically to be necessarily successful on Urth. He knew enough about math and quantum mechanics to operate his base, and only needed to ask the computer one or two things that he would have known automatically. The only thing that made him feel less stupid was GIR’s constant rambling and nonsense. But he had done it. He was disconnected from the subliminal control of the empire. He was one more step towards freedom. 

During the late nights where he would just sit and do nothing, around the time that humans would be asleep he would think about his plan. Should he fight to liberate all Irkens? Was he doing the right thing? Was the empire good or bad? What was he doing? Why was he risking everything to stay on Urth when there was a galaxy full of more competent planets, with more intelligent inhabitants. Was he defective before or after Impending Doom One? 

His brain was full of constant anxiety and paranoia. Maybe that was why he favored Urth, was the fact that he could be defective, and still be normal. He could sleep for days when Irkens where not supposed to sleep. He could cry and not have to fear execution. 

He hoped that he would someday be able to make medication that would help his organic brain, like the ones that human specialists give. But he was not human so the medication that already existed would not work on him. 

Zim sat down with a note pad and decided to write down all the things that he needed to do to become independent. After his PAK’s disconnection from the server, he had to stop all contact with the Tallest. Then he needed human clothes. And he needed to make his base more human, to a point that he could have more than just Dib over. And the last step, the one step that has been in the works for quite some time was an external species shift. It was relatively new Vortian technology, that latched onto DNA and through that changed the appearance of a person for an indefinite amount of time. It only changed the appearance and could not change the placement of organs or height. It was perfect. He could say that the human doctors had found a way to fix his skin condition. It was the step he was looking forward to the most. He was excited to see what he would look like with human external DNA. 

“Computer, what time is it?” 

“It is 6 am in your current time zone.” 

Zim looked up from his notepad, he would have to leave for Skool in about an hour, and he needed to prepare. He needed to bring supplies to Skool so he could make sure his organic brain could learn as much as possible. His PAK acted as a backpack, so he opened the top hatch and placed 3 notebooks, pens, a calculator (since his PAK couldn’t do calculations anymore) and a water bottle full of electrolytes and minerals that his PAK would usually supply automatically throughout the day. Because the PAK was disconnected from the system it acted like a computer with no WIFI, unable to function past turning on and accessing primary functions. The only reason that Zim still needed his PAK connected to his body was because the intricate way that it wrapped around his main nervous system, It would be a major surgery that has never been successful in Irken history. So Zim decided to not entertain the idea. With his PAK still connected he could still use the PAK legs and tool extensions, so it wasn’t something he was overly worried about. 

Zim took the elevator up to the top floor and sat on the couch next to GIR. “Are you bussy GIR?” 

“Scary monkey show” was all that he responded with. Zim sat next to Gir for the rest of the hour that he had left before he needed to go to Skool. Zim didn’t know what the human equivalent GIR was, but he was glad that he was around. As much as he was a crazy nuance, he kept Zim company, and as ZIm sat watching the Scary Monkey Show with GIR, he realized that he loved him. He couldn’t live without him. Zim pondered this feeling for a while and decided that this feeling is probably the same as a human would feel towards a child. And GIR sure did act like a child, so it made sense to Zim. 

“I’m going to school GIR, please don’t make a mess of the house.” Zim said as he stood up and grabbed his winter coat from the back of the couch. 

“Yes, my master!” GIR saluted as his cyan eyes flashed red, trying to compute an order in his damaged computer brain. 

The walk to skool was long, and was Zim was sensitive to the cold, the autumn air was chilling his to his shmoopoz, the hollow foundational system that he learned humans call bones, and a skeleton. He was glad that Dib gave him his sister’s old coat or else he would be frozen by the time he got to Skool. 

After he got to his first class everything seemed to be going well. He had a relative understanding of the math being taught in class today, he was taking notes and copying down the graphs being written on the white board. But one of the equations was completely knew. He knew that with his PAK connected he would know the answer right away, but he was at a loss. He contemplated asking for help. Sure, it would be embarrassing, but isn’t he attending Skool to learn now? He needed his organic brain to be as smart as his PAK brain was. He raised his hand and was instantly called on. He asked the teacher to repeat the equation. After the teacher went over it again, he understood it better. But he also felt a pair of eyes burning holes in the back of his head. He turned to look, and Dib was staring at him. He knew that the fact that he didn’t know something must be confusing the earth smeet, and that amused him. He would prefer that Dib remain confused; it was very entertaining. 

The rest of his classes went about the same way, he would be comfortable with the subject and would ask questions about stuff he didn’t know. He was in only one other class with Dib-shit, so he was comfortable to ask as many questions as he wanted. Once he got to lunch, he pulled out the water bottle from his PAK and sipped from it while he watched the other students eat the school lunch. Today's lunch was “mashed potatoes and mystery gravy”. The food here had gotten better now that they were in high Skool, but it was still inedible. 

Zim was zooning out when a tray was slammed onto the table. 

“WHAT ARE YOU UP TO, ZIM?” Dib yelled, getting a little too close to his face. 

“I don’t know what you mean.” Zim tried to keep his tone as nonchalant as possible, but the sudden attention had raised his anxiety to a body shaking level. 

“Don’t act dumb with me! Wait a minute, you’ve been doing that all day!” Dib stood up straight and pointed his finger in Zim’s face, “What are you planning Zim!?” 

“If I was up to something, which I’m not, it would be none of your business! Now leave me alone!” Zim pushed Dib’s face away from his. Now Zim was worried. Usually that would start a fight, and with his PAK disconnected he wasn’t sure how fast he would heal. But thankfully, instead of becoming a full-fledged fist fight Dib just started monologuing about how the world would find the truth. It was moments like these that Zim really hated Dib. It completely overruled every nice thing that Dib had ever done and fueled the hate in Zim’s heart. Zim picked up his things and left the table while Dib was still talking. By the Tallest, was he annoying. 

The rest of the Skool day went well, Zim continuing to ask questions and take notes. Skool felt so much more important now, Zim felt like he understood why children were sent to Skool for so many years. Everything he did felt like a new experience. Honestly, life was so much more enjoyable this way. It was like everything he knew belonged to him, not someone else. Zim was looking forward to the next step of his plan. 

* * *

Zim’s PAK had been disconnected for 3 weeks now. Every day he devoted to learning something new, and everyday Dib got on his case. Dib was understandably confused about Zim’s intentions, but he had not planned on letting Dib know. It was getting increasingly more difficult to act like nothing was different, and some days Zim had almost spilled his guts about what was going on. Usually he told Dib every plan, so not telling him about this one, even though Dib would most likely respond well to Zim’s new intentions, was hard. Zim wanted to wait to reveal his plan until he was absolutely sure it was going to work. He wanted to make sure the Vortian technology worked as well as the blending in with human society a bit more. 

Zim also had not contacted the Tallest in the past 3 weeks. Some small part of him hoped that the Tallest would miss him and contact him on their own. That they would say how much they appreciated Zim and all the work he had done. That he was an important member of the empire and that what he was doing was wrong. He wanted to be proved wrong just this once. Mostly, he just wanted to be cared about. And so far, it looked like no one cared. 

And that was fine. Zim was strong, he had survived many trials in his life, and he was going to make himself someone worth caring for. Once he was just as human as the rest of Urth, hopefully Dib would be less rude, and hopefully Zim wouldn’t have to worry about being caught all the time. 

So far in the past 3 weeks Zim has learned that being human is to learn, and to improve, but it was also lonely. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who have left kudos, yall are amazing!


End file.
